February 7 – The various charges against Olympiacos owner Evangelos Marinakis – some legally and others through the media – are rapidly dropping away one by one. The latest charge to be reversed was by the Greek Administrative Court of Appeal in support of the positions of Olympiacos and Marinakis.

The court’s verdict annulled a decision made by the Committee of Professional Sports in a ruling dated on 5/11/2015, which imposed a $200,000 fine on Olympiacos FC and Marinakis. The court rejected the Committee’s complaints that Olympiacos’s administration did not satisfy the conditions of legality and regularity.

The court’s verdict means all charges against Marinakis have been dropped and there is no problem with his participation in the management of Olympiacos. The fine that was imposed has been cancelled.

Marinakis has faced a swathe of allegations that in some cases have led to legal cases but he has still to be convicted of any crime or wrongdoing. Meanwhile Marinakis has apparently had enough and taken the legal offensive against one of his main accusers, Panathinaikos owner Giannis Alafouzos, who is also one of Greece’s largest media owners.

Alafouzos, owner of SKAI TV Station was found guilty by a Greek court in January, of instigating the journalist Kyriakos Thomaidis to violate Greek legislation regarding the protection of sensitive personal data.

Both were sentenced to one year in prison and fined for making public documents from the case file of the ‘Koriopolis’ investigation. This was personal information that the court had sealed and was unrelated to the Koriopolis case.

This was not the first conviction for Alafouzos and Thomaidis. On 20 December 2016 Alafouzos and Thomaidis were twice found guilty for similar offences, in two separate decisions, and convicted to 1 year and 4 months imprisonment and a €5,000 fine in one case and to 1 year imprisonment and a €5,000 in another.